Parents (magazine)

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Parents
File:Parents magazine.png
Editor in Chief Dana Points
Categories Parenting
Frequency Monthly
Publisher Meredith Corporation
Total circulation
(2011)
2,215,645
First issue October 1926
Country United States
Based in New York City[1]
Language English
Website www.parents.com
ISSN 1083-6373

Parents, published by Meredith Corporation, is an American mass circulation monthly magazine that features scientific information on child development geared to help parents in raising their children. It was first published in October 1926[2] and soon was selling 100,000 copies a month.[3]

Its editorial focus is on the daily needs and concerns of mothers with young children. The glossy monthly features information about child health, safety, behavior, discipline and education. There are also stories on women's health, nutrition, pregnancy, marriage, and beauty. It is aimed primarily at women ages 18–35 with young children.

Columns include As They Grow, which cover age-specific child development issues, as well as the reader-generated Baby Bloopers, It Worked for Me and Goody Bag. The magazine also produces a website,[4] an iPhone app for kids, Parents Flash Cards, and GoodyBlog.com, the now-defunct blog.

The magazine was started by George J. Hecht in 1926, and he hired Clara Savage Littledale to be its first editor. She was followed by Mary Buchanan. The magazine was sold to Gruner + Jahr in 1978, at which time Elizabeth Crow became the magazine's editor for the next decade. Meredith acquired the magazine when Gruner + Jahr left the US magazine business in 2005. Sally Lee was the editor from 1998 to 2008. Dana Points has been Editor in Chief since 2008.

The children's magazines Children's Digest and Humpty Dumpty were published by the same publisher as Parents from the 1950s through the early 1980s, until they were sold to the Saturday Evening Post company.

With its impressive historical reach, Parents has frequently been used by academics, to document social and cultural shifts over time. Melissa Milkie and Kathleen Denny (2104) [5] describe the prominence of the magazine:

"The magazine's goal of disseminating scientific knowledge of all types concerning children's development and family life in general, proved to be very popular. The magazine was the only U.S. periodical whose circulation rose during the Great Depression, and during the 1930s and 1940s, it was proclaimed as the most popular advice periodical in the world (Schlossman, 1985).[6] By 1971, PM claimed in its pages to have counseled mothers and fathers in the 'rearing of more than 100 million children,' attesting to its prominence" (Milkie and Denny, 2014, pp. 7–8). Despite its gender-neutral title, the magazine's advice has implicitly been directed toward women.[7]

References

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  5. Milkie, M. and K. Denny (2014) Changes in the Cultural Model of Father Involvement: Descriptions of Benefits to Fathers, Children, and Mothers in Parents' Magazine, 1926-2006. Journal of Family Issues, 35:223-53.
  6. Schlossman, S. (1985) Perils of Popularization: The founding of Parents' Magazine. Monographs for the Society for Research in Child Development, 50, 65-77.
  7. Strathman, T. (1984). From the quotidian to the utopian: Child rearing literature in America, 1926-1946. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 29, 1-34.

External links


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